Fire Tone Out

04Z1V6 · #1 (**permalink**) 10-08-2011, 5:45 PM

I have purchased a BCD396XT and I have a list of fire tone outs for Douglas County I have been working on and was wondering if anyone has a completed list of fire tone outs that I can compare them to? I am working with 151.115 DCFD Main

Spitfire8520 · #2 (**permalink**) 10-08-2011, 7:27 PM

About half a year ago, I looked at a bunch of archived audio files and tried to analyze the frequency. I came up with the following, but I don't have a scanner to confirm any of these frequencies so sorry if they are off. I may have rounded some of the tones off due to fluctuations, so I'll put the exact tone in brackets. I also looked at South Metro's and Littleton's Tones as well, but I'm assuming you just want tones that are dispatched by Douglas County. Enjoy!

Douglas County Dispatch Tones (Elbert County Departments)
TONE A: 675 Hz (1 sec) [673 Hz]
TONE B: 745 Hz (2.3 sec)

Castle Rock Fire Department
TONE A: 350 Hz (1 sec) [349 Hz]
TONE B: 410 Hz (3 sec)

Franktown Fire Protection District
TONE A: 370 Hz (1 sec)
TONE B: 435 Hz (3 sec)

Larkspur Fire Protection District
TONE A: 350 Hz (1 sec) [349 Hz]
TONE B: 370 Hz (3 sec)

Jackson 105 Fire Protection District
TONE A: 370 Hz (1 sec) [367 Hz]
TONE B: 540 Hz (3 sec)

04Z1V6 · #3 (**permalink**) 10-08-2011, 7:40 PM

I will keep working on this, are lists are close and I will put it in the wiki as soon as I have it nailed down. Thank you for the reply.

CharlieKe · #4 (**permalink**) 07-09-2012, 12:11 PM

I would be interested in the Littleton tone-outs, particularly station 14.

Spitfire8520 · #5 (**permalink**) 07-12-2012, 5:13 PM

I think Littleton has a single, uniform tone out for their entire department and don't depend on individual station tones as they rely more on First In Station alerting or something similar to that nature. I attempted to use archives to figure out their tones, but then again trying to figure out tones with digital audio isn't the most accurate thing to do, and I don't believe I can pick up on their VHF Simulcast. Here's what I found back then.

Littleton Fire Rescue
TONE A: 570 Hz (1 sec)
TONE B: 915 Hz (3 sec)

On the other hand, I think Littleton's neighbors (Englewood and Cunningham) still use individualized station tones.

Toneslider12 · #6 (**permalink**) 07-15-2012, 5:24 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Spitfire8520

I think Littleton has a single, uniform tone out for their entire department and don't depend on individual station tones as they rely more on First In Station alerting or something similar to that nature.

On the other hand, I think Littleton's neighbors (Englewood and Cunningham) still use individualized station tones.

Littleton Fire & Cunningham Fire both have a uniform tone for reqular operations and use First-In for station alerting. LFR does have individual station two tones in case First-In fails, but that rarely if ever happens.

Englewood Fire still uses three individual tones for each of the stations.

04Z1V6 · #7 (**permalink**) 07-16-2012, 12:38 AM

The tone outs posted work well I have used them for some time.

CharlieKe · #8 (**permalink**) 01-15-2013, 12:46 PM

Jumping in here on an old thread, I am hearing several different tones now on Littleton Fire (154.34), AND they seemed to have stopped all voice transmissions on the analog channel. In the past the initial analog page included the voice announcement, but now that seems to be exclusively on DTRS on TG 1851.

CharlieKe · #9 (**permalink**) 01-17-2013, 9:15 AM

Well, if anyone is interested the voice announcements returned to Littleton fire (154.34) after being gone for a bit. The Littleton station tones I am hearding are 569.1 and 928.1. Other tones are also heard for higher number stations (61, etc), though I don't know what stations those are.

jimmnn · #10 (**permalink**) 01-17-2013, 9:59 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by CharlieKe

Well, if anyone is interested the voice announcements returned to Littleton fire (154.34) after being gone for a bit. The Littleton station tones I am hearding are 569.1 and 928.1. Other tones are also heard for higher number stations (61, etc), though I don't know what stations those are.

61, 62 and 63 are Cunningham which is dispatched by Littleton.

Jim<

CharlieKe · #11 (**permalink**) 01-18-2013, 1:47 PM

Thanks for the explanation Jim.

AdamDaMan · #12 (**permalink**) 01-18-2013, 3:01 PM

I don't understand. I am new to the community and have NO IDEA what a fire tone out is. Can anyone explain? I looked at the RadioReference Wiki page on it and it just confuses me.

rdale · #13 (**permalink**) 01-18-2013, 3:06 PM

What part lost you?

AdamDaMan · #14 (**permalink**) 01-18-2013, 3:07 PM

I just dont understand what a tone out is..

AdamDaMan · #15 (**permalink**) 01-18-2013, 3:09 PM

And how you can set a tone out on a scanner

rdale · #16 (**permalink**) 01-18-2013, 3:26 PM

The user's manual spells out "how" quite clearly, what step are you stuck on? A fire toneout (as the Wiki says) is a tone that many volunteer fire departments use to alert their pagers.

Spitfire8520 · #17 (**permalink**) 01-21-2013, 4:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by AdamDaMan

I just dont understand what a tone out is..

A tone out (normally 2 tones) is used to signal when a department or station has a call. In more rural areas, most stations have their own tones and pagers that would "listen" for the tones and sound when a call gets dispatched. A lot of big cities and suburban areas now use networked station alerts instead of relying on tones. If you go on Youtube, there should be plenty of "Fire Tones" or "Minitor (Pager)" videos to show you what the tones can be used for. Some videos follow, you can note the difference in sounds of the tones:

Fire tones for I-95 wreck - YouTube
Morrow County Fire Tone Test on Kenwood TK 272 and Minitor IV - YouTube
Kenwood TK-2180 vs Motorola Minitor V pager test - YouTube

As for scanners, it's a neat feature that Uniden has built into their scanners to listen for tones much like a pager does. Not all scanners have this feature however.

04Z1V6 · #18 (**permalink**) 01-21-2013, 6:35 PM

If you watch some TV shows you will here a series of tones that when activated turns on things like lights in the fire house this is close to what happens for real. When I was at a fire house back in the day with ADCOM unless you had a portable on you would not hear a multi tone. What happens is the tone sent from dispatch would be received by a receiver in the fire house that then opened a high pitch tone and the paging system and turned on the lights in the station and at the same time printed out the address incase you did not hear dispatch, It used to be all done by hard relays but now is mostly done with software and soft relays and of course the vehicle all have computers in them but pagers are still in use also.